Wetherspoon’s Tim Martin featured in pro-Brexit poster

Brexit figurehead: Tim Martin has been used in a Leave EU campaign poster

A pro-Brexit campaign group has used a poster of JD Wetherspoon’s chairman Tim Martin in front of a Union Jack toasting the message “Brexit gloomsters should put a sock in it”.

The image, used by Leave EU, was tweeted to its 132,000 Twitter followers on 12 July, alongside the message: “Wetherspoon boss Tim Martin has harsh words for remoaners talking down Britain.

“Time for them to get on board with the will of the people.”

The poster, which was retweeted 510 times and had more than 800 likes, has Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas, newsreader Jon Snow, Labour MP Chuka Umunna, and Gina Miller who brought Brexit to the high court, all with animated EU socks in their mouths.

However, the poster did not go down well with some twitter users, as one commented: “At least there are some places I know for sure I’ll never ever have anything to eat or drink again”.

Gloomy warnings​

The image was inspired by an article in the Telegraph​ where, alongside the trading update by Wetherspoon, Martin said the general public was “reluctant to listen to dire warning about the UK’s future outside the single market given gloomy warnings about the performance of the economy prior to the referendum having so far proved wide of the mark”.

He told the Telegraph​: “The public's message to Carolyn ‘we're all doomed’ Fairbairn, head of the CBI, and other gloomsters is: put a sock in it.

“We'll do well with or without a free-trade deal, so stop tying the hands of our negotiators, who are doing their best to achieve a respectable outcome."

Commenting on the image, Martin told the Morning Advertiser​: “ I did say ‘put a sock in it’ as part of an article, but it referred to industry organisations like the CBI and not to those people represented in the tweet, of which we were unaware until we were contacted by The Morning Advertiser.​”